As a sidenote, this beer is not available in Ontario in any liquor or beer stores. For those of you who have beer the the Esplanade Bier Market though, have a look at the large painting on the back wall of the Bier Market. It's the exact same picture that is used as the label of Verboden Vrucht. (575 characters)

Pours a big, airy, tan-colored head. Hangs out for a while. Foggy, opaque body with a light brown color. Looks very dense.

Yeasty, slightly alcoholic smell. Nothing I can point out very specifically, just sweet with a hint of malts.

Opens with a creamy head taste and a nice, high carbonation level. Sweet body with a bitter aftertaste. It seems to me to be lacking the spiciness of the regular hoegaarden. But, on the other hand, it lacks the heaviness of the Grand Cru. Which is a plus in my book. I think I notice a slight phenolic taste, but I'm still not quite sure what exactly that is yet. It's not as fruity as I expected, so it loses some points there.

Presentation: 33 cl slender brown Euro style bottle with a “Best Before End” date on the back label. States that it is bottle conditioned. Front label depicts the tempting of Eve with the forbidden fruit.

Appearance: Deep and hazy plum reddish hue with a rich and creamy looking off white lace that is quite remarkable for the rings that it leaves.

Smell: Ripe fruit with suggestions of granny smith apples, golden raisins and slight pineapple. Bit of grain and a very noticeable ester content in the nose.

Taste: Very intricate mouth feel from the bottle conditioning, incredibly smooth without holding back on the crispness either. Creamy and almost slick medium body. With the wave of crispness comes a fruity ester alcohol flavour that grabs hold of the taste buds and does not seem to want to let go. Fruity yet on the dry side with some dry malt caramel flavours. Bit of hops that are over taken buy the earthy yeast with a slant of grain in there also. Finishes nearly dry but still has a drop of sweetness in the back end of it all.

Notes: Sometimes beer can be too complex, this is one of them. Flavours are big yet flailing around. A big Belgian to reckon with and to also respect with its high alcohol content. A beer to pair with a rich meal rather than to drink alone. (1,305 characters)

Brown bottle, best before 9/7/05 - consumed only a few weeks before that date.

App: Very impressive. I poured it, had a long dinner, and the head is still there. A really really good head retainer for this strength. The head itself is 'graded' - large bubbles on the bottom, finer ones on top (may be a side effect of the above point). Quite fizzy, very sticky lacing, not a huge amounth though. Colour is dark red-brown. Very warm in colour, mildly cloudy.

Taste: Orange, pure malty alcohol on sides of tongue, fiery like a good single malt. Peppery, not very hoppy. In fact there are hops, but I find them hard to identify. Maybe plum, barley grain. Natural-tasting®. Candied sugar. Bubblegum, banana, ash, coffee, grape and possibly the texture of turnip. Nice and complicated.

MF: Smooth, just slips down. Alcohol makes it a bit numbing.

Drinkability: Hmmm... strong, peppery, a little cloying. Not so great to drink all night. (1,038 characters)

Poured into a Unibroue snifter, which I found very appropriate, considering the bottle label reminds me of something Unibroue or Dieu du Ciel would do themselves (or perhaps its the other way round?) A dark, ruddy amber brew, the colour of which reminded me a great deal of black cherries. A fluffy, off-white head sat on top like a generous dollop of ice cream. Good retention on this, lovely lacing as well.

The nose is absolutely invigorating. Plum brandy, black currant, raisins, grape, sugar, only a mild yeastiness. While hardly wallowing in complexity, it certainly is mouthwatering.

The tastes are quite similar as are found in the nose. In addition to black currant and raisin, I'm also picking up sherry, a bit of chocolate and malt. Very tasty indeed. Except for the sweet wine/sherry flavors, the alcohol is marvelously difficult to detect.

Forbidden Fruit is undoubtedly sweet, almost cloyingly so, but it works tremendously well as a dessert beer. More than a bottle at a time would be far too much, but a nice snifter enjoyed with cheese or cake would be excellent. In my case, since it possessed so many similarities to a sweet port or a sherry, some Stilton cheese and crackers cut through the sweetness brilliantly, making for a great food pairing. (1,325 characters)

Appearance is a delightful amber brown, and there is some *texture* to it. It fairly sparkles in the daylight!

Smell is good. You can notice the fruit esters and aromatics wafting from the beer - but they are balanced. Not overpowering or overdone. The scent has character. It smells like beer, but good beer.

Taste is what beer is all about, and this one doesn't disappoint. A complex mix of yeasts, malt, fruits, caramels and a solid jolt of ethanol. I think the alcohol is a solid contributor to this beers taste - as it provides a nice base for all of the other flavours to perfuse through. You can spend a lot of time getting lost in these flavours. And a lot of time working your way through them all.

There is a bit too much bitterness in the aftertaste - but the main event compensates for this.

Mouthfeel is good, silky and satisfying.

Finally, the serving of this beer is always a bit of an event. The bottle has naked people on it. The special glass it is regularly served in has naked people on it. The coaster has naked people on it.

I gave this beer those numbers in consideration of the vast array of beers out there, which wouldn't be as good as this. If it were a rating against other beers in this style, it would be a little lower. i should also mention that this is one of my favorite styles.

appearance: not quite brown. brown with a little copper. the last drops poured dark brown/black and stayed visible in the head.

smell: just what you would expect from a belgian strong dark. i haven't had many in the last few weeks, so the smell was quite nice.

taste: it started off somewhat spicy, and to be honest, somewhat disappointing when considering this style. i don't want to slam this beer (which was in fact from a bottle) but the first 1/3 was almost even glassy/metalic tasting. the beer was purchased about a week and a half ago in the netherlands and traveled with me on a flight back to texas, so it's not too old, but is well traveled. about half way through the flavor came around. the array of flavors that i've comed to love from the dark belgians really showed up, and durring the the last 1/3 it tasted great.

this is a quality beer. i've been drinking alot of really good trapists and belgians over the last 4 months, so my palate is somewhat spoiled in this style. still a good beer and one worth trying. (1,309 characters)

Pours with rich head to start, though did not last too long. Medium dark colour with a little cloudiness if you empty the bottle all at one go, though you can leave the sediment in the bottle. Rich sweet heavy aroma, fruity, caramel and malt, with a hint of spice and nuttiness. Flavour is very rich and sweet, but not a great deal of character, no depth of flavours other than the sweetness, any subtle flavours overtaken by the sweetness. I did enjoy this, but would not want more than one bottle, there are other Belgium beers with similar sweetness but more depth of flavour and character. Recommended to try if you enjoy this style of sweet rich beers, but don't expect too much, the name implies something greater than it is !

Pours a dark rusty orange into the glass (the proper one no less). Lots of yeasty bits floating around, making it partially opaque. Bubbly head diminishes to ring of bubbles along the glass rather quickly. A lot of fruit in the nose, but hard to discern. I get plums and maybe some figs. Alcohol comes through in the nose as well. The taste is the same mix-bag of fruits with some yeasty notes. It's quite complex but you sort of get lost in it. Good though. The fruit and malt jumble leads to a mild hop bitterness and alcohol warmth in the end. Mouthfeel is good. This is a decent beer, but not amazing. I would come back to it, but I just feel that if the flavours were balanced a little better and were more subtle, it would be an improvement. The alcohol brings down the drinkability. (789 characters)

Beer poured a deep amber color with a thick tan head that lasts for awhile and gave way to a nice ring around the edges and impressive lacing. The nose had scotchy and sweet notes, pleasing. The taste was pleasantly scotchy, malty sweet. There were also noticable citrus tones and a hot feeling from the alcohol levels. The beer was rounded out by a nice bitterness on the tongue. A well rounded beer and probably the best from Hoegaarden. (439 characters)

A gift from Joj upon the moveout. I think this was purchased during his trip to Belgium, December 2003 (so aged since then).

Dark, rosy-brown in color with a large, pillowy white head and suspended sediment throughout (and a large, large amount of yeast fluff on the bottom).

Nose of dark fruit esters and alcohol, with big, bready yeast. Smooth flavor across the tongue, with more dark fruits and biscuits. Very, very drinkable--even dangerously so--with a nice finishing warmth.

Good dark ale, fruity and full mouthfeel. Held up in taste. Dark, yeasty and fresh from Belgiium at Volo's. Bit of wheat with yeast, popular with mates at end of hot day. Was good both below and at room temperature. Quite drinakable. Pepper, strong carbonation. (261 characters)

a dark chestnut brown with no rising carbonation, and just a half finger of head. bits of sediment floating about. Very full, pleasantly sweet, dark fruit smell + apricot. A bit of Alcohol tang, a hair tart, but underneath that there's a well built, solid not so sweet dark fruit flavor. Mouth feel is a tart and drying. Overall a nice one. (340 characters)

I am afraid that I had drank a third of this before I started writing this review and hence the 8.8% has already started afflicting my brain cells.
I had carried my bottle across the city so it got quite a shake-up and it was a reddish brown cloudy hue. The taste itself is a complex mix which changes as you progress through the glass (i guess as it warms up too). It is spicy and perhaps more than a little tart yet the taste of the alcohol is hidden in the way that it seems only belgians seem to know how to do. (516 characters)

Appearance: Light brown with a finger of tan head.
Smell: Malty smell with whiffs of cherry and coco.
Taste: Hops in the middle and some chocolate, nuts on the back with a caramel aftertaste. Lots of flavors I couldn't identify, many were too strong and got in each others way.
Mouthfeel: Smooth and creamy, one of the nicer aspects of this beer. (378 characters)